This article gives another perspective on liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The history both Lincoln and Sherman has been written by the victors and beyond reproach. Do we want to restore honor in this country? Can we restore honor by bringing up subjects over 100 years old? Comments are encouraged.

Randy's Right aka Randy Dye NC Freedom

The American Lenin by L. Neil Smith lneil@lneilsmith.org

Its harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative  given the former categorys increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latters prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment  but its still easy to tell a liberal from a libertarian.

Just ask about either Amendment.

If what you get back is a spirited defense of the ideas of this countrys Founding Fathers, what youve got is a libertarian. By shameful default, libertarians have become Americas last and only reliable stewards of the Bill of Rights.

But if  and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most people  youd like to know whether an individual is a libertarian or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.

Suppose a woman  with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated  desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because hed already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time shed complained about his stealing.

Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasnt a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?

History tells us that Lincoln was a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force  sell to us at our price or pay a fine thatll put you out of business  for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. Thats what a tariffs all about. In support of this noble principle, when southerners demonstrated what amounted to no more than token resistance, Lincoln permitted an internal war to begin that butchered more Americans than all of this countrys foreign wars  before or afterward  rolled into one.

Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent  indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims  and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. For the same purposes, Lincoln declared, rather late in the war, that black slaves were now free in the south  where he had no effective jurisdiction  while declaring at the same time, somewhat more quietly but for the record nonetheless, that if maintaining slavery could have won his war for him, hed have done that, instead.

The fact is, Lincoln didnt abolish slavery at all, he nationalized it, imposing income taxation and military conscription upon what had been a free country before he took over  income taxation and military conscription to which newly freed blacks soon found themselves subjected right alongside newly-enslaved whites. If the civil war was truly fought against slavery  a dubious, politically correct assertion with no historical evidence to back it up  then clearly, slavery won.

Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight knock on the door, illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, disappearing thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. To finance his crimes against humanity, Lincoln allowed the printing of worthless paper money in unprecedented volumes, ultimately plunging America into a long, grim depression  in the south, it lasted half a century  he didnt have to live through, himself.

In the end, Lincoln didnt unite this country  that cant be done by force  he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, hed have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.

If libertarians ran things, theyd melt all the Lincoln pennies, shred all the Lincoln fives, take a wrecking ball to the Lincoln Memorial, and consider erecting monuments to John Wilkes Booth. Libertarians know Lincoln as the worst President America has ever had to suffer, with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson running a distant second, third, and fourth.

Conservatives, on the other hand, adore Lincoln, publicly admire his methods, and revere him as the best President America ever had. One wonders: is this because theyd like to do, all over again, all of the things Lincoln did to the American people? Judging from their taste for executions as a substitute for individual self-defense, their penchant for putting people behind bars  more than any other country in the world, per capita, no matter how poorly it works to reduce crime  and the bitter distaste they display for Constitutional technicalities like the exclusionary rule, which are all that keep America from becoming the worlds largest banana republic, one is well-justified in wondering.

The troubling truth is that, more than anybody elses, Abraham Lincolns career resembles and foreshadows that of V.I. Lenin, who, with somewhat better technology at his disposal, slaughtered millions of innocents  rather than mere hundreds of thousands  to enforce an impossibly stupid idea which, in the end, like forced association, was proven by history to be a resounding failure. Abraham Lincoln was Americas Lenin, and when America has finally absorbed that painful but illuminating truth, it will finally have begun to recover from the War between the States.

Lincoln wasn't even shot. It was all a hoax to get away from his crazy wife. He then shoved autograph seeker John Wilkes Booth out of his presidential box in Ford's Theatre and had him shot by federal troops to complete the coverup.

The civil war was about slavery. Sorry. The Confederacy was based on it and so was the Southern economy. You cannot rewrite history no matter how much you want to. This effort started at the end of the war and I was shocked to find it still going on today. So for this pathetic revisionism, that rears its ugly head here occasionally, I will enshrine the following from the message to the Confederate Congress April 29th 1861 from Jefferson Davis:

As soon as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves... Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra-fanaticism and whose business was... to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister states, by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp pairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, which the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States. In the meantime the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000 at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race, their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South;... and the productions in the South of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.

This next quote comes from a speech in Savannah on March 21st 1861 by Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy.

The (Confederate) Constitution has put at rest forever the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions- African slavery as it exists among us- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the rock upon which the old Union would split He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it- when the Storm came and the wind blew, it fell. Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth......It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of natures laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect in the construction of buildings lays the foundation with the proper material- the granite- then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them.”

Oddly enough, whenever these two speeches are reproduced and posted the discussion stops dead in its tracks. A separate and equally discredited proposition put forward is that the South fought for States Rights and not slavery. Well, I will not post it here, but anyone can Google it. Just enter: Confederate Constitution text and read the results. The Confederacy reproduced the U.S. Constitution almost exactly except for a minor change in how the president was elected, and the major changes of giving Constitutional protections for slavery. Thats right; they reproduced exactly the hated federal system right down to the suspension of habeas Corpus in times of rebellion. So that argument is completely discredited from the start. Yet it is still made as people try and change history for emotional reasons. But history is history and it doesnt change.

8
posted on 09/27/2010 1:35:31 PM PDT
by IrishCatholic
(No local Communist or Socialist Party Chapter? Join the Democrats, it's the same thing!)

Sic Semper Tyranis JWB was correct but his methods not, particularly after it was too late. Lincoln was all you write and more. He expanded government, ignored the USSC regularly, and would not brook any interference in prosecuting his rotten undeclared war on America. In our house he is the worst president with FDR following. Wilson mug ht be there but his war only killed 100,000. I am sure he was sad the Dishonest Abe beat him.

Abe was a good guy. I love how saving the union is somehow unrestrained tyranny, but an economy based on owning people is just a trivial thing.

Don’t confuse some incredibly honorable men of the south, and respect for some amazing technological things they accomplished, with respect for the political ideals of their system. Abe did the right thing,,,,

(I know,,, i know,,, it wasn’t about slavery,,,yawn lol.)

12
posted on 09/27/2010 1:39:26 PM PDT
by DesertRhino
(I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office)

I say that because when you go after Abraham Lincoln, you automatically go after the Republic. This puts yourself in the position of supporting the Confederacy and slavery.

Oh, yeah; I've read and heard all the arguments about “States Rights”. But reading the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution proves that ‘The People’ have rights; states have powers (no rights - those come from our Creator).

The Southern states tried to turn human beings into livestock property, ignoring that important statement about “all men are created equal”.

No matter how many arguments, that is what the Civil War was about. Freeing an enslaved people. Babbling about States Rights is just smoke and mirrors.

Slave economics, race repression, race obsessions, dragging black Repubs out of their homes and shooting them in front of their families, lynch mobs, fire hoses, church bombings, all of that is Democrat history. Never put yourself in the position of trying to defend Democrat history.

They have done their best to try to re-write history. Don’t help them.

If you think its fine for one man to own another man, and if you think libertarianism is all about protecting the right of the slave-owner in preference to the enslaved, good for you, but don’t pretend you’re a Republican or a libertarian either one.

Lester Neil Smith III is a science fiction writer (When did "science fiction writer" become synonymous with "crank"? Is it a recent thing?)

In 2000, Smith said he'd run for President if he got one million signatures. He could only muster 1,500, but still appeared on ballots as the Libertarian Party candidate in Arizona, even though Harry Browne was the party's national nominee.

L. Neil lives in fantasy world where the Whiskey Rebellion was a success and a libertarian utopia ensues:

In L. Neil Smith's alternate history novel The Probability Broach (1980), Albert Gallatin convinces the militia not to put down the rebellion, but instead to march on the nation's capital, execute George Washington for treason, and replace the Constitution with a revised Articles of Confederation. As a result, the United States becomes a libertarian utopia called the North American Confederacy.

In other words he's got his head so far up his own rear that he has to open his mouth to see where he's going.

Now you'd think a science-fiction writer might be intrigued about the possibility of slave-owning states successfully rebelling and establishing their own plantation state south of the Mason-Dixon line, but I guess how that would end up is just too obvious to be worth the trouble of writing.

It would be more true to say it depends on whether they are a statist or a libertarian. There are plenty of northerners who recognize the truth.

Nice strawman you built there -- you have to be either a statist who cares nothing for individual rights or a libertarian who only cares about individual license and to hell with everyone else.

Thankfully the Framers saw it differently when the created a Nation of laws under the Constitution. Lincoln did no differently in 1860 than Washington would have done in 1790, nor what any patriot President would do today. That is, preserve the Union under the Constitution.

It's the statists like Obama who care nothing about the Constitution and the spoiled libertarians (apparently you and others here among them) who want it their way or no way without regard for the Constitution, who are the problem.

Why don't you try Conservatisism for a change so that you can leave something worthwhile for your kids?

(When did "science fiction writer" become synonymous with "crank"? Is it a recent thing?)

No, it's not a recent thing.

ALL his life the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick yearned for what he called the mainstream. He wanted to be a serious literary writer, not a sci-fi hack whose audience consisted, he once said, of trolls and wackos. But Mr. Dick, who popped as many as 1,000 amphetamine pills a week, was also more than a little paranoid. In the early 70s, when he had finally achieved some standing among academic critics and literary theorists  most notably the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem  he narced on them all, writing a letter to the F.B.I. in which he claimed they were K.G.B. agents trying to take over American science fiction. More...

You don't really believe that the Southern states invented the concept of chattel slavery, do you?

Of course not. They just insisted on maintaining it after most civilized nations had abandoned the system as barbaric.

The actual conflicts between the sections that led up to the War were based not on whether slavery would be prohibited in the states where it was practiced, but rather on southern insistence they be allowed to spread it into new areas.

Thankfully the Framers saw it differently when the created a Nation of laws under the Constitution. Lincoln did no differently in 1860 than Washington would have done in 1790, nor what any patriot President would do today. That is, preserve the Union under the Constitution.

And what do you think Jefferson would have done?

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

BTW, the notion that Washington would have ever raised his hand against Virginia is simply laughable.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.